The government of Barbados has created a national energy storage policy and sees billions of investment potential in the sector, a minister has said.
Minister of Energy Kerrie Symmonds said on Monday (22 August) that the government had created the policy with the anticipation that storage would be the next frontier in renewable energy investment, according to local news outlet Barbados Today.
The most significant part of the policy is that all large-scale renewable resources, “such as five or ten megawatts”, Symmonds said, would have to include energy storage.
The plan is to have centralised energy storage assets owned by utilities as well as privately-owned systems, including small systems owned by households, for which the government has so far granted 4,000 licenses.
Speaking in the annual general meeting of the Barbados Renewable Energy Association (BREA), Symmmonds said: “It is anticipated that energy storage systems will be unlocking US$3.5 billion in investment for this country. Government does not contemplate a single storage solution but instead is contemplating several grid-related services.”
Energy-Storage.news has asked the Barbados government’s communications department if the quoted figure is US dollars or Bajan dollars, the latter of which would equate to US$1.75 billion based on today’s exchange rate of 1:0.5, and will update the story in due course.
Symmonds continued: “Services which reduce or eliminate the need for energy curtailment will be of the greatest interest to the Government and will also be a type of service that should be of the greatest interest to independent power producers and investors.”
As Energy-Storage.news reported earlier this year, Barbados is targeting 100% renewable energy use and carbon neutrality by 2030. In April, the Inter-American Development Bank issued a request for expressions of interest (IOE), on behalf of the country, for consulting services to help develop a competitive procurement framework for utility scale renewable energy capacity and energy storage.
It emphasised that the government wished the procurement to be technology-agnostic, something also alluded to in Symmonds’ recent comments.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has today (26 August) published a Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan and opened consultations on the key measures included.
Included in the plan is a requirement for all water companies to significantly reduce – and improve the quality of – all storm overflows discharging into or near designated bathing water by 2035. Environment Agency data for 2021 states that untreated sewage was discharged into coastal bathing waters across England for a total of 160,000 hours, in 25,000 separate discharge incidents.
Water companies would also need to improve three-quarters of the overflows discharging into nature sites classed as high-priority by 2035. Companies would then need to address all other overflows by 2050 regardless of location. The idea of ending the practice entirely is considered, but Defra ultimately concludes that they will still be allowed when there is heavy rainfall and no risk of immediate, negative impacts on the environment.
“Overflows that are causing the most harm will be addressed first to make the biggest difference as quickly as possible, and water companies will be expected to consider nature-based solutions in their planning,” Defra has stated.
To enable the tracking of progress, the Plan sets out a commitment for all overflows to have working monitors installed by the end of 2023. The Liberal Democrats claimed this week they have evidence that sewage monitors installed by water companies did not work 90% of the time in 2021. Companies will be required to publish discharge information in near real-time under the Plan.
Overall, the plan states, water companies will collectively need to invest £56bn in monitoring, infrastructure, process changes and skills needed to reduce sewage pollution through to 2050. MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) have stated this is significant, as it will require the sector to double the average annual level of investment it has made since 1989. This is when the water sector was privatised.
The Plan stipulates that water firms must not pass these costs on to customers at a rate of more than £1 extra per month, for domestic customers, for the first five years of implementation. This will cover 2025 to 2030.
Rights, regulations and governance
The Plan goes on to propose several changes to the rights of water firms, how the sector should be regulated, and what governance mechanisms companies should bring in.
On the former, the Plan explores the possibility of removing mechanisms which give property developers the automatic right to connect to sewer networks. Water firms have long argued that this automatic right can result in sewer networks becoming overwhelmed, making the need to trigger storm overflows more likely. Should this change be implemented, a new ‘approving body’ would need to be created or appointed to oversee applications from developers.
Paired with this proposal is the possibility of subjecting developers to new standards for sustainable drainage systems. Additionally proposed are new rights for water companies to repair defective drains on private property.
On governance, the Plan proposes measures to ensure that water companies’ environmental performance is more closely tied to dividend payments. Much ire has been directed at water companies this summer for increasing profits and executive pay with little done by some to improve leaks and reduce storm overflows.
“The government supports Ofwat’s recent proposals which would provide extra powers for enforcement action against companies that don’t link dividend payments to their environmental performance, or who failed to be transparent about their dividend pay-outs,” Defra has stated.
Tough or toothless?
Defra has called the Plan’s targets the “toughest ever” in this space. But not everyone is convinced.
The Lib Dems’ environment spokesperson Tim Farron called the targets “flimsy” and claimed that the timelines were unambitious, not reflecting the need to improve bathing water quality in the near term.
Farron said: “This government plan is a licence to pump sewage on to our beaches and in our treasured rivers and lakes.
“This is a cruel joke. The government is going to hike water bills to pay for cleaning up the mess made by water companies. The same companies who awarded their executives multimillion-pound bonuses this year and paid out over £1bn to their shareholders. Whilst they roll in the cash, we swim in sewage. The whole thing stinks.”
Labour’s Jim McMahon, the Shadow Environment Secretary, said the document is “neither a plan, nor does it eliminate sewage dumping into our natural environment”. Like Farron, he called for more immediate action.
McMahon said: “Under the Government’s weak improvement ‘target’, based on last year’s data we’d face another 4.8m sewage spill events in our country between now and 2035.”
Elsewhere, there has been confusion about whether the Plan contains loopholes for overflows in some areas. The Marine Conservation Society’s water quality policy and advocacy manager Rachel Wyatt said: “Defra can’t provide a list to us of the storm overflows which aren’t going to included [in the targets] – which is ridiculous in itself – so these overflows could be discharging into marine protected areas, shellfish waters or other beaches which are not designated as bathing waters.”
Supply chain leaders are under pressure from all sides to become more sustainable, not just from board-level executives but also from customers and investors. In fact, research by Celonis and IBM found that more than half of Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs) would be willing to sacrifice up to 5% of profit to become more sustainable.
One key way of improving sustainability is getting rid of process inefficiencies which create significant waste and increase unnecessary emissions. Excess stock or production waste is often the result of unclear processes, miscalculations, quality deficiencies, or capacity bottlenecks. The materials and products wasted in the process drive up costs and have a negative impact on a company’s carbon footprint. But it’s often the case that companies can’t even see hidden process problems.
Through data-powered process mining, it is possible to find and fix the hidden process problems that you don’t know you have and improve your sustainability performance.
The missing data
The sustainable procurement of materials is fundamental to achieving overall sustainability in the supply chain. Transparency with regard to the exact ecological and social impacts of suppliers is important. However, this is precisely where sufficient insight is often lacking or information is not always available in a timely manner.
Shipping delays at ports worldwide have wreaked havoc on global supply chains, with research suggesting that as little as 34% of container vessels arrived without any delay to their destination in February 2022. This statistic is only a glimpse of the huge inefficiencies in supply chain that lead to unnecessary carbon emissions and a negative environmental impact. As an example, 1.6 billion tonnes of food are wasted each year, contributing to roughly 8% of the world’s carbon emissions. 78% of this waste occurs before the food reaches the consumer due to inefficient supply chains, meaning food is actually perishing before it hits supermarket shelves. Businesses are therefore forced to order more food than is needed in order to account for the shortfall.
A common problem here is that decision-makers simply do not have the necessary information for climate-friendly route planning, and the amount of data is one of the biggest obstacles. What seems paradoxical at first glance has its roots in the increasing number of IT systems and applications as well as the virtually exploding mass of stored information. Whereas 25 years ago even larger companies worked with only a handful of different IT systems, today there are usually hundreds, often with numerous applications being used to support a single process. This complexity leads to breaks and inefficiencies in processes that cannot be detected, let alone fixed, with traditional methods.
At the same time, these weak points mean unnecessary consumption of resources and thus increased costs and avoidable CO2 emissions.
Why process mining works
This is exactly where process mining and execution management come in. Process mining works like an X-ray machine for internal procedures and can illuminate and subsequently optimise critical business processes. It does this by visualising the current state of internal operations, including all process variants on the basis of data. With valid, data-based insights across all procedures it is possible to break down silos and incorporate sustainability into every decision or measure. All processes and different data sources are taken into account. By bringing together data from all common IT systems, such as SAP, Oracle or Salesforce, and mapping it in its actual form, business processes become holistically understandable.
By applying process mining and the right execution management in this way, companies can shrink the time it takes to find a process problem from years to hours, and make great leaps and bounds in sustainability goals in a short span of time.
The path to sustainability
Making a business more sustainable actually has a positive effect on the bottom line. Some of the world’s leading companies measure the impact of inefficiencies within their supply chain processes in order to minimise resource waste. Process mining and execution management helps these companies find and realise opportunities to significantly optimise fuel consumption, yielding material, financial and environmental benefits.
Carbon commitments and sustainability goals are no longer seen as afterthoughts. Rather, they are fundamental aspects of a company’s overarching business strategy. As processes determine how businesses run, they enable operational and even systemic change. Once processes are analysed and improved with intelligence and data execution, it becomes possible to prioritise sustainability in every operational decision.
This continuous measurability is a crucial aspect for many companies in view of the increasingly strict regulatory requirements. To put it in a nutshell: AI-supported technologies and continuous follow-up are the prerequisites for a sustainability process that is ‘sustainable’ in the literal sense of the word.
The business announced the certification on Wednesday (24 August), confirming that it had passed its B Impact Assessment. The Assessment measures the positive impact an organisation has in five fields, namely environmental impact; interaction with workers; interaction with communities; impact on customers and good governance. Topics relating to both day-to-day operations and long-term plans and business models are taken into account.
edie has reached out to Unilever ANZ to request a copy of its B Impact Assessment. These are required to be made publicly available.
Around 460 businesses in Australia and New Zealand have certified as B Corps. Globally, a further 4,900+ have certified. Most of these are SMEs, as B Lab, the body overseeing B Corp certification, originally targeted its work in this field. It is yet to launch certification for large multinational businesses; this is in the pipeline.
“When businesses of the size and scale of Unilever Australia & New Zealand certify, it shows just how much the idea of business delivering positive impact on people and planet has grown,” said B Lab Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand’s chief executive Andrew Davies. “Their certification sends a powerful signal that will further advance change in the consumer goods sector, and our broader global economic system.”
Strategic approach
Unilever ANZ stated that the global company’s overarching corporate and sustainability strategy, The Compass, has proved “integral” to the identification and implementation of changes that have improved its B Impact Assessment score to the point of certification.
The Compass was launched in 2020 and is headlined by an overarching vision of becoming “the global leader in sustainable business”, ensuring that all parts of the business are “purpose-led” and “future-fit”.
On the environmental side of things, the Compass is supported Unilever’s Climate Transition Action Plan – its roadmap to reaching net-zero value chains by 2039 that has been backed by more than 99% of its shareholders. It also includes updated ambitions on issues including packaging and waste, gender equality, human rights and social inclusion.
Environmental actions already taken by Unilever ANZ under the compass include procuring 100% renewable electricity in operations; reaching zero-waste-to-landfill status for factories and piloting regenerative agriculture methods.
“We’re thrilled to achieve B Corp Certification, as both a validation of the actions we’ve implemented across Australia & New Zealand, and a motivator to strive even further,” said Unilever ANZ’s chief executive Nicky Sparshott, adding that he and his team are “already planning how we can turbocharge our positive impact”.
Sparshott added that the business will need to work collaboratively with suppliers, staff and communities to maintain its certification and encourage other businesses to follow suit. All B Corps are required to re-certify every three years.
The news will doubtless fuel the debate around which companies should be able to certify as B Corps. When Nespresso certified earlier this year, many SMEs which have been B Corps for years questioned whether a Nestle-owned entity, or a company sourcing coffee from regions facing systemic human rights issues, should be able to certify.
This summer the country’s tourist board launched a new Green Wellness cycling route. A looping cycle trail of nearly 200 miles linking natural spas, it starts in Ljubljana and heads north towards the Austrian border and then south-west towards Croatia, winding through mountains, plains and vineyards. There’s a castle on an island, a beer fountain and miles of wild flowers. The first leg ends in medieval Kamnik, a red-roofed town of castles and monasteries with a view of the mountains, Slovenia’s biggest arboretum (sporting 2m tulips in April) and the Terme Snovik spa in the forested Tuhinj valley.
Resorts along the route are all certified by Slovenia Green, which encourages recycling, renewable energy, arriving car-free, eco-friendly cleaning, locally grown food, natural building materials and so on. The spas offer pools fed by thermal springs, mineral waters to drink and wellness experiences involving salt, saunas, massage and barefoot paths.
Slovenia launched a Green Wellness cycling route this summer, including stretches along the River Savinja
Along the route cyclists can visit the world’s oldest noble vine at Maribor or sip a crystal glass of magnesium-rich water at Rogaška Slatina. Slovenia’s temperate Mediterranean climate means good cycling for most of the year, though April to October is recommended. The Wellness route has several companion trails, including a Green Gourmet cycling route or a three-day Pannonian route through the Pomurje region. The Gourmet trail starts with a train ride on the Bohinj railway under the Julian Alps. A free pass encourages public transport use in the area for those who want to linger.
Sustainable city break in Berlin, Germany
When luggage storage company Bounce recently surveyed sustainable hotels and transport, Berlin emerged as Europe’s most eco-friendly city. According to its analysis, 84% of tourists and residents get around on bike, foot or public transport. And Germany’s summer scheme, offering unlimited travel on local and regional trains for €9, has got even more people out of their cars.
An upcycled caravans in Neukölln’s Hüttenpalast. Photograph: Jan Brockhaus
From upcycled caravans to a hammock-strung hotel overlooking the zoo, Berlin is full of cool places to stay
Berlin joined the Global Sustainable Tourism Council in August 2021 and Visit Berlin lists eco hotels, restaurants and sights. They include places like SPRK Deli, which makes everything from surplus food. Klub Kitchen is popular with Mitte’s hipsters, serving up salady bowlfuls of sweet potato, ginger, pumpkin seeds, edamame and other tasty things. From upcycled east German caravans in a former vacuum cleaner factory in Neukölln’s Hüttenpalast to the hammock-strung 25 Hours Bikini hotel overlooking the zoo, the city is full of cool places to stay.
To explore Berlin’s wilder corners, buy an all-zone travelcard (€10 a day, including Potsdam with its parks and palaces). Buses 100 and 200 are good sightseeing routes, running from Alexanderplatz to Zoo through leafy Tiergarten. Head into the Grunewald on bus 218 to find Berlin’s best hike, the cliff-top Havelhöhenweg. Follow this six-mile waymarked walk past sandy beaches for wild swimming and leisurely woodland cafes.
YHA Festival of Walking
Those lonely months of strolls during the Covid lockdowns sparked a lot of interest in walking. The UK’s Youth Hostel Association hopes to tap into that with its new Festival of Walking. There will be group walks, routes to download, free tea or coffee for walkers, and 25% off at various youth hostels. There’s a guided Snowdon dark skies challenge – climbing up the mountain by torchlight and down as the sun rises for breakfast in the hostel. Lots of hostels, such as Eskdale in Cumbria and Blaxhall in Suffolk have been pioneering sustainable practices: energy-efficient lighting, solar hot water, and community recycling schemes.
The festival runs from 4 September to 20 October. “We want more walkers to discover our hostels and all they offer,” says YHA chief executive James Blake. “Whether it’s a bed for the night, a day visit for a cuppa, filling up a bottle at a refill station, using a drying room or just grabbing a loo break.”
A guided Snowdon dark skies challenge will feature in the festival
Individuals and groups can log their miles on the festival website to tramp round the world in 46 days. Blake points out that if 5,000 people walk five miles each, together they will have walked around the world. The YHA was set up in 1930 to help foster a “greater knowledge, love and care of the countryside – an aim that feels as fresh and necessary as it did 92 years ago.
Bird watching in Extremadura, Spain
Extremadura is one of Europe’s top birding destinations, with everything from bee-eaters to honey buzzards. The birds of prey are particularly dramatic, with 23 breeding species including 1,200 pairs of black vultures. More common cranes overwinter here than anywhere in Europe. Covering 16,000 square miles, Extremadura is bigger than the Netherlands, with a human population of just over a million and a huge range of habitats.
As most visiting birders get here independently, the Extremadura tourist board set up the world’s first bird tourism club, following the model of wine or whisky routes, to help travellers find information, guides and places to stay. Travel can actually help conserve biodiversity because the bird-watching cash provides a sound economic reason to preserve habitats.
Common crane in Extremadura
More common cranes overwinter here than anywhere in Europe
A magnet for visiting birders since it opened in 2005, the Casa Rural El Recuerdo (three nights from €216 room-only) is a converted farmhouse with an organic olive grove and vegetable garden. The guesthouse generates half its energy from solar panels. Owners Claudia and Martin Kelsey encourage year-round wildlife trips for the large number of migrant birds, plus summer butterfly and dragonfly tours. As a local guide, Martin can take visitors to see species they want to find without having to drive too far, meaning less fuel and more time in the field.
Green Velo, Poland
With more than a thousand miles of linked cycle paths and quieter roads through wild natural landscapes, Poland’s longest fully-signed bicycle trail tours the country’s eastern areas. Five regions, with funding from the European Regional Development Fund, cooperated to create the epic Green Velo trail. Miles of cycle path have been designed to be low-maintenance with no impact on water supplies or vegetation; there are benches, refill points, bike racks and rubbish bins. Accommodation varies from campsites to castles.
The Green Velo trail passes through marshes near the Narew River
The trail meanders through 12 areas or “bike kingdoms”, such as the Świętokrzyski national park, with its huge forests and mountains. In another kingdom, the marshes around the Biebrza and Narew rivers are great for birdwatching and elk spotting, for cycling past gold marsh marigolds and purple Siberian iris. The waymarked Green Velo route circles the edge of protected valleys, with views across the spring-flowering marshes. There are bats, beavers and lots more wildlife along the Narew valley towards Łomża with its convent and cathedral.
Other attractions along the route include the mysterious Krzyżtopór castle near Ujazd, and the city of Kielce, with its palaces and galleries. The Green Velo loops through the centre of Kielce, passing the Kadzielnia Reserve in a limestone quarry; there are concerts here in a natural amphitheatre among fossil-filled rocks.
In 2020, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) committed to reducing net emissions across its value chain by 30% by 2030, before bringing them to net-zero by 2040. At the time, CCEP said in a statement that it is ready to go further and faster after reducing value chain emissions by 30.5% since 2010.
Going further and faster has seen its Ventures arm (CCEP Ventures) collaborate with the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) to explore novel methods of capturing carbon and then using it as a feedstock.
Speaking exclusively with edie, Craig Twyford, Head of CCEP Ventures, stated that this project (which will originally last three years) would enable the firm to support scientists and experts to hopefully deliver a viable, onsite method to capture carbon emissions from facilities and then use them in products in a bid to drive down emissions.
“I think this is incredibly exciting,” Twyford told edie. “It’s a big picture idea, but if we start thinking of carbon as not just a problem but also as a feedstock, then there’s a lot of things we can start to change.
“The way I envisage it, but obviously there’s many twists and turns along the way, is that we’d ideally be able to fit direct air capture units to each of our sites that draws down the carbon in a cost-effective and efficient way. The biggest impact will probably be if we can use this to carbonate our drinks and produce sugar, but it could have impact elsewhere.”
Sugar focus
CCEP is financing the three-year research programme that will be led by the Peidong Yang Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley, which will first and foremost focus on the production of sugar from onsite carbon at an industrial scale. CCEP and Twyford believe that lab-scale prototypes could be the first step in making raw materials and packaging more sustainable and with a lower carbon footprint in the long run.
Sugarcane is not only the source of most of the world’s sugar, but is also the most produced food crop in the world. Sugarcane production has increased by more than 10% in the last 10 years with the crop now being utilised outside of the food space, namely in the creation of biofuels and controversial bioplastics.
Research from food analytics company Spoonshots found that the average water footprint used to produce 1kg of refined sugar is the equivalent of two years of drinking water for one person. Additionally, firms like British Sugar have calculated that 0.6g of CO2 equivalent is produced for every gram of sugar made.
As the population continues to grow, land becomes more contested and forests burned down for agricultural processes, it is clear that innovating the agri-sector is key to combatting key megatrends like land loss and degradation, deforestation and the climate crisis.
For companies like CCEP, agricultural ingredients, including sugar, can account for around 25% of the firm’s overall carbon footprint. Tackling emissions associated with agri-ingredients will be key to reaching net-zero.
Twyford points out that this innovation could also assist in reducing “some of the largest carbon contributors” across the value chain, namely by saving on raw and finite materials for things like packaging – by turning carbon into PET plastic and reducing the need for crude oil – and fuel and reducing transportation and logistics costs due to the onsite aspect of the project.
Supply chain innovation
Given that the majority of CCEP’s Scope 3 emissions are in the supply chain, the company is aiming to help all of its strategic suppliers set science-based targets and transition to 100% renewable electricity. For ingredient and packaging-related emissions, the company will accelerate plans relating to sustainable agriculture and 100% recycled plastics. Some life-cycle analyses have found that soft drinks bottles made using 100% post-consumer-recycled plastic generate 40% less CO2e than virgin plastic bottles.
Twyford stated that this innovation would likely have the biggest impact on its Scope 3 aspirations, but that there were still plenty of challenges to overcome.
“There are some hurdles but it think [the research team] can overcome them,” Twyford said. “The challenges are around selectivity and efficiency and creating the right glucose. So the first three years will be seeing how these challenges can be overcome. But [the team] has a roadmap for this and 2025 will come around quickly, at which point we’ll start asking ‘where do we go from here’?”
While the success of the initial research hinges on overcoming barriers, the long-term ambition for this project is scalability. Twyford believes that having an organisation as large as CCEP, which serves 1.75 million customers across 29 countries, will create some confidence in the carbon capture market which, to date, has looked at larger projects between a cluster of organisations and sites.
Crucially, CCEP believes that this vision could be shared across the industry, helping other firms to decarbonise at a pace on the road to net-zero.
“Everyone needs to learn off everyone,” Twyford said. “So if these direct air capture systems can really be used to help us view carbon as a valuable feedstock then this can be a solution that will help a lot of industries. I think these types of solutions will be industry-wide eventually.
“For us, we think that if we can take on a leadership role to back this, then others may look at us and view this as something that is serious and can be scaled.”
CCEP is not the only firm with this view. Carpet manufacturer, Interface, for example i forging ahead with its Climate Take Back strategy, which is also filled to the brim with moonshot goals. It focuses on “bringing carbon home and reversing climate change” and to “stop seeing carbon as the enemy, and start using it as a resource”. Indeed, many industrial firms have switched their mindset to stop “demonising” carbon and instead realise the potential that is could have as a key material building block.
Twyford ends by reiterating that this will not see the company become sugar manufacturers and that any success will require the expertise of its existing supply chain to help share advice and best practice.
To this end, earlier in the week, CCEP confirmed the creation of a sustainability-linked supply chain finance programme that will be operated by specialist food and agri-bank Rabobank.
The new finance programme will reward suppliers that make improvements on sustainability across the business and will feature sustainability-linked KPIs that, if met, will create discounts against the initial funding rate.
Carlsberg has today (17 August) unveiled its new ESG strategy, Together Towards ZERO and Beyond (TTZAB). The new strategy updates existing sustainability targets around key areas including emissions, material use, water efficiency and regenerative agriculture practices.
TTZAB is headlined by a roadmap to deliver a net-zero value chain by 2040. This will see the brewer accelerate efforts to operate zero-carbon breweries and decarbonise across its packaging and farming practices. Carlsberg notes that agriculture and the processing of raw materials, as well as the production and disposal of packaging account for around two-thirds of its value chain emissions.
Under the new ESG strategy, Carlsberg will aim to deliver a 30% reduction in beer-in-hand carbon emissions and zero carbon at all breweries. This will set the company up to deliver a zero-carbon value chain by 2040.
The company will also ensure that 30% of raw materials are sourced using regenerative agricultural practices by 2030, so that, by 2040 100% of all raw materials are sourced this way.
Carlsberg will also ramp up efforts focused on the circular economy. By 2030, 100% of packaging will be recyclable, reusable or renewable and a 90% collection rate will be achieved for bottles and cans. Carlsberg will also deliver a 50% reduction in fossil-based plastics and ensure that recycled content accounts for 50% of bottles and cans.
To this end, Carlsberg recently announced plans to trial the performance of 8,000 fibre-based beer bottles, in a move that could help the company reduce carbon emissions and improve recyclability. edie spoke to Carlsberg’s group sustainability director Simon Boas Hoffmeyer about the new initiative, which you can read here.
On water, Carlsberg will replenish 100% of water consumed at breweries located in areas of high water risk by 2030.
“With our new targets we support an industry transformation towards more sustainable business practices through, for example, shifts in farming practices, sourcing procedures, and product design, as well as the scaling-up of efficient deposit return schemes,” Boas Hoffmeyer said.
“Across all our ESG focus areas, we will continue improving our performance, while increasing disclosure and transparency for all our stakeholders. We will continue to tackle these challenges through a sustained focus on partnerships with suppliers and partners.”
The new ESG strategy builds on Carlsberg’s long-standing “Together Towards Zero” strategy, which one of the first to truly embrace the need for 1.5C science-based targets and has catalysed progress towards goals to reach zero carbon emissions at breweries and a 30% reduction in beer-in-hand emissions by 2030.
The previous strategy has helped deliver strong progress towards net-zero, including a 40% reduction in carbon emissions and a 21% reduction in water use per hectolitre of beer since 2015.
The transition towards net-zero will be supported by external frameworks and initiatives. Carlsberg is signed up to RE100, the We Mean Business Coalition, the Race To Zero, the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders and the WFA’s Planet Pledge.
Siemens’ Congleton factory manufactures more than 1.2 million controls and drives each year and has been fitted with an array of energy efficiency and low-carbon solutions.
With support from Siemens’ energy and performance services business, Smart Infrastructure, the Congleton factory now generates 75kw of renewable energy through a hydro-electric plant at Havannah Weir on the river Dane. The facility also uses certified carbon-neutral biogas to power onsite engines. A building management system, modern windows and LED lighting have also been fitted to reduce total energy costs by up to 30% respectively.
Siemens believes the facility, which also has EV charging for staff and visitors and is aiming for zero waste to landfill, will become carbon neutral this year. Siemens’ original 2015 commitment was to ensure carbon neutral operations by 2030.
Andrew Peters, Managing Director of Siemens Digital Industries Congleton, said: “Siemens believes that sustainability is a force for good and can deliver value for all its stakeholders. We want to help customers achieve sustainable growth and to transform their industries through decarbonisation. The first step of that is for us to achieve these ambitions in our own operations.
Siemens’ original 2015 commitment was to ensure carbon neutral operations by 2030.
“I am delighted that by leveraging a culture of continuous improvement and sustainability – the vital components to Siemens’ Congleton’s long-term success – we have achieved carbon neutrality, a major milestone in our ambitions to reach net zero emissions by 2030.”
The company claims that energy efficiency measures have saved around £250,000 annually at time when energy costs are rising quickly.
After setting its carbon neutrality goal in 2015, Siemens began tying executive-level pay to progress against key sustainability targets, including its 2030 GHG goal, at the advice of the board.
It has since joined Amazon’s Climate Pledge and vowed to reach net-zero carbon by 2040.
Amazon’s ‘Climate Pledge’ was launched in September 2019, after the e-commerce giant faced mounting pressure from consumers, investors and its own staff to firm up its environmental ambitions and actions in line with its scale. It worked with non-profit Global Optimism, the brainchild of former UN climate secretary Christiana Figures, to develop the pledge, which is headlined by a 2040 net-zero target, and to open it up to additional businesses.
The company has recently joined the SteelZero initiative. Convened by The Climate Group, which is perhaps best known for its RE100 and EV100 initiatives, SteelZero represents businesses from all parts of the steel value chain. By signing up to SteelZero, companies commit to procuring, specifying, stocking, or producing 100% net-zero steel across all operations by 2050 at the latest.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) 2023-2027 was launched on the 17th of August 2022 by the Government of Sri Lanka and the United Nations in Sri Lanka.
The UNSDCF is the framework that guides the work of all the UN Agencies in Sri Lanka and articulates the collective vision and contribution of the United Nations to support Sri Lanka to accelerate actions towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The Cooperation Framework gives primacy to accelerating actions to ensure a rapid recovery from the economic crisis along with the impact of COVID-19, prioritising support to revitalise the economy and economic activities, social services, decent employment, social cohesion, and health and well-being for all people in Sri Lanka.
The UNSDCF was co-signed by the Secretary to the Treasury Mahinda Siriwardana on behalf of the Sri Lankan government and UN Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka Hanaa Singer-Hamdy on behalf of the United Nations. Heads of UN Agencies, Funds and Programmes in Sri Lanka also signed the Cooperation Framework.
The signing ceremony hosted at the Ministry of Finance was also attended by Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Aruni Wijewardane and the Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific of the UN Development Coordination Office, David McLachlan-Karr.
Speaking at the event, Secretary to the Treasury Mahinda Siriwardana noted that “the current global challenges demonstrate the continued importance for multilateral solutions that bring together the international community around shared priorities. This Cooperation Framework with the United Nations in Sri Lanka will be key, as we pursue sustainable and inclusive development for the people of Sri Lanka.”
Elaborating further the UN Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka Hanaa Singer-Hamdy said, “this Cooperation Framework is mutually owned and anchored in national development priorities, the 2030 Agenda and the principles of the UN Charter. The UNSDCF is structured around four interrelated and mutually reinforcing Strategic Priorities where the UN system will concentrate its expertise to support Sri Lanka to make transformational and accelerated progress. These Strategic Priorities cover Inclusive and Equitable Human Development and Well-being; Resilient and Green Recovery and Growth for Shared Prosperity and Environmental Sustainability; Social Cohesion and Inclusive Governance & Justice; and Gender Equality. Of course, our work will be underpinned by a crosscutting commitment to support rapid recovery from the economic crisis and the impact of COVID-19”. She further noted that programmes by the UN System will be anchored in the principles of human rights and non-discrimination and ensuring that “no one is left behind”.
“The 2023 – 2027 Development Cooperation Framework reflects Sri Lanka’s national development priorities while working in partnership with the UN Country Team towards the realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It is being concluded at a very significant moment in Sri Lanka when transformational changes are being operationalized in the economic and social fronts. The Framework is also an important shift for the UN system in enhanced national level coordination in the delivery of its development activities,” Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Aruni Wijewardane said.
The UNSDCF will be funded through core budget allocations of an estimated USD 60 Million, in addition to approx. USD 325 Million through other resources – spread across the five-year period of implementation.
The small town of Onslow, Western Australia, is now powered almost entirely by renewable energy, and the utility behind that project wants to roll out the same tech across the state.
State-owned utility company Horizon Power said today that it will deploy distributed energy management system (DERMS) technology that helps coordinate the use of different resources like rooftop solar PV, battery storage and electric vehicles (EVs).
In the demonstration project at Onslow, the entire town ran on renewable energy and battery storage for a period of about an hour-and-a-half last year, thanks to a microgrid system which allowed it to operate as a self-contained electricity grid.
While that means Onslow still relies on natural gas engines and diesel generators, that reliance is greatly reduced, and the energy minister for Western Australia, Bill Johnson called the demonstration a “landmark step towards building a cleaner, brighter, renewable energy future for our state”.
The project showed that distributed energy resources (DERs) could be safely integrated at grid level, and Johnson, along with Horizon Power and software and controls providers PXiSE and SwitchDin, talked up the potential for it to be replicated widely.
Horizon Power said today that the technology enabled four times as much rooftop solar to be installed and integrated into the grid at Onslow, a town where more than 40% of homes have PV.
The DERMS works using predictive analytics to enable maximised penetration of renewable energy on the grid – predicting weather patterns, electricity consumer behaviour and so on – while also ensuring stability and security of electricity supply to homes and businesses.
It enables not just DERs but also centralised resources like large-scale solar PV and batteries as well as thermal power stations to act in concert together to meet local energy needs.
Horizon will introduce the technology into remote and regional parts of the state. The company’s general manager for technology and digital transformation said that around 60% of Horizon Power’s energy systems are already dealing with limits on rooftop solar.
The DERMS will “increase solar access for our customers, lower their energy bills, and help reduce emissions,” Ray Achemedei said.
The rollout begins in the coastal resort town of Broome early next year and the utility will progressively deploy the tech across all of its power systems by the middle of 2024.
“This is the technology that will underpin the transition to 100% renewable towns,” Achemedei said, noting that the paradigm shift from centralised fossil fuel generation sending power in one direction only to decentralised and decarbonised energy which is bi-directional or multi-directional in flowing around the grid presents challenges that Horizon Power is tackling head on.
Other initiatives from the utility include a tender for distributed microgrids for rural areas launched in October 2021.
Then in November last year, Horizon began Energy Storage in Regional Towns, a AU$31 million programme to equip nine remote towns in Western Australia with shared community battery storage.
That programme is funded by the state government and is adding about 9MWh of battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity to local energy networks. Western Australia’s government put battery storage and solar PV at the heart of its post-pandemic economic recovery plans, announced in June 2021.
